“Stay the fuck there,” Ivan ordered and hung up the phone.
Now that hewasn’t completely in the doghouse like the last time, Nix had a chance to properly appreciate Cooper’s apartment building and how close it was to Ivan’s own. “You must pay him well,” he pointed out after the doorman let them in.
“I pay for the apartment on top of his salary,” Ivan told him. “It’s part of the deal.”
“I’m surprised he wanted to go into the family business at all.” From what Nix had seen, Cooper didn’t seem like the type.
“He didn’t. His father came to my father,” Ivan explained as they got onto the elevator. “My mother’s brother,” he clarified, which made sense to Nix, considering how little Cooper looked like Ivan’s father’s side of the family. “He was struggling after moving here from Russia, wanted to secure a life for his son. Decent man, but a fucking mess.” Ivan shook his head. “My father wasted Cooper on gopher duties. He was…mistrustful of tech. After he died, I changed Cooper’s workload. He was shit at gopher duty, anyway. Too thin-skinned around the men.”
Maybe it had been wrong of Nix to push the Book into Cooper’s hands after all. He sounded like the kind of person Chaos would eat alive, even if it was more out of carelessness than malice.
“I may have miscalculated,” he murmured.
Ivan only gave him a look as he rapped his knuckles sharply on the apartment door.
There was the sound of what seemed like twenty different locks unlocking, and then Cooper’s auburn head poked out, something between a smile and a grimace on his lips. “Ivan.”
“Cooper,” Ivan greeted shortly. “Where’s the demon?”
“No demons here!” called out a very familiar voice from somewhere in the apartment, bright and chipper.
Cooper rubbed a hand over his eye with a nervous laugh and opened the door wider, letting them in.
No matter how much he might have fucked up, Nix couldn’t contain his grin. Because there, sitting cross-legged on top of a dinged and dented coffee table, was Chaos.
A sight for fucking sore eyes, even if Chaoswasin his human form.
“This?” Ivan asked Nix under his breath, eyeing Chaos across the room while Cooper looked on nervously, chewing on his thumbnail.
Nix supposed itdidlook unlikely. It had been a while since he’d seen Chaos out of his demon form, and while his face was familiar, he was still remarkably…unassuming. Or at least in this current version.
He was slightly shorter than Cooper—who already wasn’t a very tall human—and slender, all big eyes and elfin features. His hair at the moment was a rather dull brown, with an eye color to match. He seemed to have borrowed some of Cooper’s clothes, for whatever reason. That sweatshirt he was wearing was definitely the same one Nix had seen on Cooper before, at least.
Chaos cocked his head at Cooper, and the human went to stand next to him, still nibbling on his fingers nervously.
They looked kind of cute side by side like that. Definite twink-for-twink vibes.
Ivan was still looking at Nix expectantly, so Nix gestured from Ivan to Chaos and back again with a flourish. “Ivan, meet our chaos demon.”
Chaos shook his head, pouting at Nix. “No demons here,” he said again pointedly, like Nix was ruining his game. “I’m just a very mortal, human friend of Cooper’s here.”
Ivan pinched the bridge of his nose. “How—”
“I was uploading the ledgers you gave me,” Cooper said hurriedly. “I wasn’t quite sure why you wanted that old weird book with them, but I didn’t want to miss it if you needed it, so I did it anyway, and then it just kind of—” He raised his hands, fingers spread wide. “—happened.”
“You summoning a demon just kind of happened,” Ivan said blankly.
Cooper paled a bit but nodded. “Yes?”
“And where is the Book now?”
“I still have it.”
Ivan narrowed his eyes. “I should fucking hope so.”
Quicker than even Nix could follow, Chaos was off the coffee table and in front of Ivan, every part of him held in eerie stillness, as if he hadn’t moved at all. Except his eyes, which cycled through a range of colors—aquamarine, violet, hot pink—before settling on bright, fiery red.
Not a great sign, that. Nix began to shuffle closer to Ivan but stopped when Chaos’s gaze darted his way.
